Better Access for Students: How one school district upgraded their catalog Carol Love Sarasota County School District, Osprey, FL

Why did Sarasota County come to MARCIVE for processing? Many items inaccessible in the catalogs Data problems as a result of migration from older system Records with minimal information Requirement to provide Reading Notes in MARC records Desire for current and consistent name and subject headings

Preparing for the project Sent samples of records from all levels of schools to be evaluated by MARCIVE Decided to fund processing over two fiscal years Involved software vendor (Mandarin Library Automation) in determining specifications

Processing specifications Brief Record Upgrade (BRU) for all databases that had been through migration (33) Authorities processing for all databases, including new schools (37) Lexile® measures and Accelerated Reader data added to all databases Summaries in records re-formatted and retained in upgraded records Non-matches not returned to minimize re-loading of data

Timeframe and testing Five to seven databases sent at a time over sixteen-month period Sample products generated for each database Upgraded databases output via FTP after test approval Records loaded into system by Mandarin

Results and plans for the future Added access helps students find items Names and subjects consistent and file properly Reading Notes available to students, parents, and teachers List of non-upgrades for weeding older material Data better prepared for system upgrade and creation of union catalog

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